THE ONE THING Nova liked most about the tunnels was that there was no night or day down here. Nighttime could be lonely on the surface, when all the storefronts were closed and even the most serious of night owls finally gave in to the lure of sleep as the clock edged its way toward morning. Nova didn’t mind being alone, but she got bored sometimes, waiting for the world to wake up and return to its drab, miserable existence.
In the tunnels, the only reminder that Nova had eight more hours to spare than everyone else was whether or not she could hear Ingrid’s snores coming from the defunct elevator shaft she called a bedroom. Everything about Ingrid was loud—her bombs, her personality, and evidently, even her dreams.
Nova collected the darts from the target and walked back down the tunnel, setting herself up for practice again. She’d been at it all night. Usually she liked to divide her nighttime hours between tinkering with her newest batch of weaponry and inventions, or practicing meditation and martial arts, or going through a series of exercises to build up her strength and stamina—any skills she might need in her next encounter with the Renegades.
But tonight, she couldn’t shake the memory of the parade. Those moments when she’d been on the rooftop. When Captain Chromium had been in her sights.
She could have done it. She, Nightmare, Nova Jean Artino, could have been the one to take out the invincible Captain Chromium.
But she’d hesitated. It had taken her too long to pull the trigger, and she’d blown it.
Never again.
She returned to the line she’d chalked across the tracks and loaded a dart back into the chamber of the gun. Not the gun she’d had on the rooftop that day—Red Assassin snatched that one right out of her hands and she never had a chance to recover it—but another found in Ingrid’s collection.
She lifted the gun into her arms. Peered down the sights. Lined up the first target.
She fired.
Again.
And again.
And again, until each of the darts had been unloaded.
She exhaled and went to collect them. Only when she’d gotten close enough to the targets could she evaluate how well she’d done.
Bull’s-eyes across the board. A dozen darts stuck into the pupils of a dozen magazine clippings—each one a glossy photograph of the Captain’s charming face.
She didn’t even smile as she yanked the darts out. This was just target practice. She’d failed when it had actually mattered. When she could have made a difference.
All revolutions come with death. Some must die so that others might have life. It is a tragedy, but it is also a truth.
She could still remember Ace telling her this when she was younger, when she’d asked him why so many had to die so they might have freedom. At the time she couldn’t fathom the hatred and violence that had been directed at prodigies in the centuries prior to the Age of Anarchy, but even then, even to her six-year-old mind, Ace’s passion had been contagious.
So few people really understood what Ace had been trying to accomplish. He hadn’t wanted the world to become what it did. Sure, there had been a lot of brutality and destruction when he first took over, but he was right—there always is during a revolution. Ultimately, he’d wanted a world in which prodigies were no longer oppressed and frightened, belittled and tormented. He’d wanted a world where they could all be free to live their own lives according to their own devices.
It was all the other power-hungry people, villains and non-prodigies alike, who had started to vie for control. Who had run amok in a world without rules.
Nova didn’t want to go back to the Age of Anarchy. She didn’t want innocent people to be slaughtered like her family had been. She just wanted the freedom that Ace had envisioned for her and those like her. She wanted the Renegades and the Council to leave her alone, to leave all the Anarchists alone.
Hell, she wanted the Council to leave all of society alone. Maybe they thought they were doing the right thing by being the end-all, be-all of the ruling elite, but society was barely getting by and they had too much pride to admit they weren’t what the people needed.
What the people needed was to learn to take care of themselves, but that would never happen so long as superheroes were running things.
She was making her way back up the tracks when the ground shook beneath her. Nova stumbled, planting a hand on the wall to stabilize herself. Bits of dust and chunks of loose concrete tumbled down the sides of the tunnel in small rivulets. The tracks vibrated under her feet, and for a moment Nova had the uncanny and horrifying thought that a train was coming—and she had nowhere to go.
The trembling stopped. A few more shudders passed underfoot before the earth stilled and quieted again.
Nova glanced down the tunnel, wondering whether it had been an earthquake—one buried deep underground, perhaps even a hundred miles away. Nothing to be concerned with. Surely these ancient tunnels had withstood far worse.
But then the silence was again broken, this time by a crash. The acoustics of the tunnels made it impossible to guess how far away the sound had come from, but it filled Nova with one certainty.
The Renegades were back.
She grabbed the gun and loaded a dart into the chamber, stashing the others into a pouch at her belt. Though Leroy hadn’t yet filled them with poison, she figured she could still find a way to make them useful.
She raced back in the direction of the platforms and tunnels where their train cars dwelled. As she neared the main platform, she forced herself to slow. She didn’t have her hood or mask to disguise herself as Nightmare, and she knew it would be foolish to give up her identity to the Renegades now.
As she rounded a corner, the walls began to shake again, which was followed by another crash—louder and closer this time.
Nova reached the back end of Cyanide’s train car and paused. She could hear things scattering across the platform and dropping down onto the tracks. A moment later, a small can of baked beans came rolling toward her, striking the side of the tracks only a few steps away from Nova’s feet.
“Come on out, Anarchists,” trilled a chipper, feminine voice. “It’s time for your performance review.”
Nova darted behind Leroy’s train car and crept to the other side. Peering around the edge, she spotted four figures on the central platform, where many of their rations and supplies were stored. Or had been stored—two of the massive industrial metal shelves had been thrown to the ground, leaving a mess of broken bottles, crushed boxes, and a thick stench of vinegar in the air.
She recognized the Renegade team immediately—one of the most high-profile teams in the city, with a reputation for having taken countless criminals into custody. Their leader, the girl who had spoken, was Frostbite. A few years older than Nova, she was athletic and pretty, with a bob of silver-white hair and silver-white skin that was so translucent Nova could see hints of her blue veins even in the tunnel’s dim lighting.
Then there was Aftershock, a stocky man with a dark goatee who must have been the cause of the earthquakes. Beside him stood Stingray, a lanky, beady-eyed boy who moved with as much creepy, slithering grace as the animal he took his alias from, a sleek barbed tail trailing behind him. Last was the giant. Gargoyle, who seemed to be permanently hunched from always having to stoop to fit into places, and whose limbs could shift from human flesh to solid stone in an instant.
“Well,” said Frostbite, planting her hands on her hips, “it looks like they’re all too cowardly to come say hello.” She nodded at Aftershock and Gargoyle. “Search the tunnels and see if you can’t draw them out of hiding.”
While the two Renegades lumbered down opposite tunnels—Aftershock passing an arm’s distance from Nova’s hiding spot—Stingray began picking through the scattered supplies.
“Pickled okra?” he said with a sneer, picking up a glass mason jar. “Sounds disgusting.” Turning, he threw the jar at the wall, where a mosaic of small tiles spelled out the name of the street above. The glass shattered, spilling more vinegar and green vegetables across the platform.
Nova’s grip tightened on the gun.
“And Fruity Rings?” said Frostbite, kicking a box of breakfast cereal that was already crushed on one corner. “I haven’t eaten this junk since I was four. It’s really better given to the rats.” Stalking to the edge of the platform, she picked up the box, opened it, and dumped the chunks of colorful cereal onto the tracks.
That box had actually been Winston’s—it was his favorite kind of cereal—so it would be no great loss to the rest of them. Still, the waste of it made Nova’s jaw clench. Anyone who remembered the Age of Anarchy at all knew that wastefulness was an unforgivable crime, no matter which side of the battle they fell on.
On the opposite side of the train car, a door clunked open. Frostbite and Stingray spun toward the car. Nova ducked back into the shadows, listening to the sounds of Leroy’s footsteps as he paced down the steps and onto the tracks. She caught a glimpse of Frostbite’s disgusted look as she took in Leroy, with his scars and discolored skin.
As Leroy passed into Nova’s line of vision, she saw that he was wearing his worn bathrobe over tattered sweatpants and slippers. His feet crunched through the pile of cereal as he made his way to the steps beside the platform.
“Oops,” Frostbite said in a saccharine voice. “Did we wake you?”
“Oh no,” said Leroy, coming to stand a dozen paces from the Renegades. “We were expecting you, after what happened today. It is nice to see you still living up to expectations. Although…” He sighed heavily and gestured toward the fallen shelves and the mess that took up a quarter of the platform. “I question the point of all this.”
Frostbite’s face turned swiftly from arrogant to enraged. She closed the distance to Leroy, a long shard of crystalline ice forming in her fist. “The point is to remind you freaks that anything you have, whether it’s food or water or even this pathetic little hovel in these cockroach-infested tunnels, is because we allow it.” She lifted the shard, tucking the point beneath Leroy’s chin and forcing him to lift his face. “And if we decide you don’t deserve such charity, then we can take it away.”
“Charity?” said Leroy, his voice even despite the ice digging into his jaw. “The Renegades have given us nothing. Everything we have has been bought and paid for—or fairly scavenged, just like everyone else.”
“Scavenged,” said Stingray. Turning his head, he hacked up a glob of spit and sent it onto the platform. “We wouldn’t all still be scavenging for goods if it weren’t for your lot, now would we?”
Leroy lifted an eyebrow—or the muscle where an eyebrow would have been, but had been burned off ages ago. “If it wasn’t for our lot, then the boy with the barbed tail almost certainly would have been slaughtered at birth, his remains stuffed into a jar of formaldehyde for further examination.”
Stingray’s face contorted with anger, but Leroy went on, “Your Council has had domain over this city for almost ten years. If they haven’t managed to restore your economy, perhaps you should ask them what’s taking so long, rather than wasting your time blaming us.”
Frostbite dragged the ice shard to the side, leaving a thin cut beneath Cyanide’s chin. He flinched, but only slightly.
“Maybe if the Council wasn’t having to defend the people of this city from mindless attacks, they could focus on cleaning up the mess that villains like you made of this world.”
“Maybe,” said Leroy, “with so many prodigies brainwashed by their tutelage, they could stand to update their security measures.”
The ground rumbled again and Aftershock appeared at the entrance to one of the tunnels, each step he took sending mild quakes into the earth. “Nothing down that way but a bunch of moldy books.” Planting one hand on the ledge of the platform, he vaulted himself up to stand beside Stingray.
“You must not have looked very hard,” came a dry voice. Aftershock spun to see a dark form emerging from the tunnel he’d just left—Phobia’s pitch-black cloak forming as if made from the shadows themselves, the blade of his long scythe catching on the dim overhead lights. No loungewear for him, of course. Of their whole group, he was the only one Nova never saw outside of his uniform—the hooded cloak, the mask of shadows, the scythe that arced over his head. Also unlike Ingrid and Honey, Winston and Leroy, Phobia was the only member of the Anarchists whose given name remained a mystery. Sometimes Nova wondered if he had been born so terrifying from the start that his horrified parents had settled on Phobia even back then.
“They really are pathetically unobservant.”
Nova glanced up, to where Ingrid was sitting on the narrow pedestrian bridge that crossed over the tracks to the opposite platform, her long legs dangling through the rails.
“I’ve been up here this whole time and not once did they think to look up. Honestly, it’s amazing this city is functional at all with you people in charge.”
Frostbite snarled. “Get her down.”
Aftershock lifted one knee and stomped—hard. A fissure opened in the concrete, arcing toward the staircase. The ground split apart beneath the steps, a gap opening in the earth. The stairs slumped downward. The bridge tilted sharply. Ingrid leaped to her feet moments before the bolts holding the metal rails pulled free and the bridge careened to one side—half of it sinking into the chasm that Aftershock had made, the rest crashing down onto the tracks. Ingrid jumped clear of the bridge at the last moment, diving into a roll and coming to a crouch not far from Leroy’s train car.
“That’s better,” Frostbite said breezily, one hip jutting to the side.
Sparks flashed in Nova’s eyes. Taking a step back, she lifted the rifle, turning the barrel toward Aftershock. But no sooner had she found him in the sights than a figure moved between them.
She lowered the gun. Ingrid stood between her and the Renegade, her back to Nova. She reached back with one hand, sweeping her fingers in Nova’s direction.
Nova glared, annoyed at being shooed away like a pestering child.
She would have been even more annoyed, though, if a part of her didn’t know that Ingrid was right. It would be careless to give herself away, and what was she going to do with this gun and a handful of darts? Without any poison, an offensive attack would serve only as a minor annoyance.
“I recommend caution,” said Phobia, his raspy voice as patient as ever. “These are old tunnels with old foundations. You wouldn’t want us all to be buried alive, would you?” He spun his scythe overhead. “I wouldn’t mind so much, but I doubt that was your intention when you came to interrupt our repose.”
With Ingrid still blocking her view, Nova sank back between the wall and train car. She reached the metal rungs on the side of the car and, gripping the gun in one hand, scampered to the top. She stretched out on her stomach, inching forward until she could see the platform below.
“I think what Phobia’s saying,” said Ingrid, blue sparks flickering at her fingertips, “is that sometimes showing off can have negative effects.”
Frostbite smirked. “I wouldn’t know.”
Screams of hysteria echoed up from the far tunnel. Nova planted one hand on the rooftop of the car, craning her head upward. At first Honey’s wails were indistinct cries of panic, but as they grew nearer, they began to merge into desperate words.
“Put them back! Put them back! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
Moments later, Gargoyle lumbered out from the overhang of the tunnel, his arms cradling close to two dozen bee hives of various sizes and states of completion. The swarms of angry drones were buzzing all around him, creating a black writhing mass that engulfed his torso, but he had turned his entire body to stone and their vicious stings appeared to have no effect.
Honey came marching after him, dressed in a pale pink negligee, her hair rolled in curlers. “You have no idea the work that goes into those, you giant chunk of rubble!”
When Gargoyle continued to ignore her, she started to run and launched herself at him, grasping for his thick arm. She dangled from his elbow, her pale legs kicking vainly at his side.
Irritated, the Gargoyle gave one powerful shake of his arm, sending Honey skidding across the platform. She crashed into the pile of supplies, her shoulder smacking the toppled metal shelf. Though momentarily dazed, her eyes were vicious when she raised them again.
Gargoyle came to stand before Frostbite, who seemed to tense, her eyes darting warily around the cloud of wasps and hornets, some of which had bodies as long and thick as Nova’s thumb, and venom that could burn like hot pokers.
Frostbite jutted a finger toward Honey. “Call them off,” she demanded, her voice dulled by the buzzing all around her. “Send them away or this will be treated as a use of prodigious abilities against an active Renegade.”
Honey pushed herself up to sitting. “I will as soon as he puts those back where he found them!”
“Puts them back?” Frostbite said, her tone laced with amusement. She turned to Gargoyle. “Where did you find them?”
“She’s got a room a few hundred feet down that way,” he said. “An old storeroom of sorts. Was brimming with these.”
“Well, for a prodigy with control over bees,” said Frostbite, cocking her head, “that sounds like harboring deadly weapons to me.”
Honey let out an aghast cry. “Those are my babies! And you’ve just taken their homes—the homes you have no right to!”
“And I’m telling you to call off your babies, now,” said Frostbite. “Or else your next home will be a prison cell at Renegade Headquarters.”
Honey fixed a glare on her and Nova could see her shaking. Her eyes flashed and the air seemed to hum around her—though perhaps that was the incessant buzzing as the bees continued to throw themselves at Gargoyle’s impenetrable skin.
Nova could see temptation written across Honey’s face, coupled with indecision.
Perhaps she couldn’t harm Gargoyle, but Frostbite would be plenty vulnerable to the stingers of her most deadly wasps. Nova had to admit, seeing Frostbite writhing in pain from a hundred venomous stings seemed very appealing at that moment.
But it would last only seconds before Gargoyle reached Honey and either killed her or arrested her.
This tiny revenge wasn’t worth it, Nova knew, and Honey seemed to realize the same thing. Drawing herself up amid the toppled cans and boxes, she squared her shoulders and flung her arm wide.
As one, the swarming insects cycloned into the air, then turned and retreated back into the tunnel.
Once they had gone, Frostbite nodded at the Gargoyle. “Destroy them.”
Nova gasped, but the sound went unheard behind Honey’s shriek.
Gargoyle dumped the hives onto the ground and began stomping through them, crushing them one by one beneath his massive stone feet.
Honey’s cries turned from enraged to heartbroken as she watched the destruction being wracked upon the hives—many with drones and worker bees still inside. Honey’s body was ravaged by sobs as the destruction grew. Papery walls scattered across the platform, and the corpses and detached wings of bees smashed into the concrete.
All the while, the Gargoyle was grinning. It was the smile of a child who had just discovered the sadistic pleasure of crushing beetles beneath his heel.
Nova ground her teeth until her jaw hurt. She swung her attention from Honey to Ingrid, Cyanide to Phobia, but no one moved to stop the Gargoyle.
Any attempt to stop him would be seen as an attack on a Renegade and would be cause for arrest. The Renegades had made it quite clear when they accepted Cyanide’s truce all those years ago that the Anarchists would not be given any third chances.
Finally the Gargoyle was finished. He kicked aside the remains of the last hive. It skidded across the platform and tumbled onto the tracks, not far from where Frostbite had dumped out Winston’s cereal.
“Well, now that we’re all accounted for…,” said Frostbite sweetly, twirling the shard of ice like a baton. “We have some business to attend to.”
She turned and, before Nova could guess her intentions, heaved the ice like a javelin at Phobia. It struck him through the chest and his body dispersed into black smoke, wisping back into the shadows of the tunnel.
In the same moment, Stingray spun and lashed his barbed tail at Honey. The venomous spines caught her in the side and her cry of surprise turned to one of pain as her body went rigid and collapsed. In almost the same motion, Stingray swung the tail back toward Leroy, stinging him in the shoulder as he tried to back away. Leroy froze, then tipped backward, landing hard on the concrete.
Nova pulled the gun closer, this time targeting Stingray. But his attack had already ceased, leaving Honey slumped awkwardly over the fallen shelving unit, and Leroy motionless except for his eyes, which were blinking rapidly as he gaped toward the low ceiling. Nova was not exactly sure what sort of venom Stingray had in his tail, but they both appeared paralyzed, motionless but for twitching limbs as the venom rushed through their veins.
Ingrid roared and charged toward the platform, a sphere of blue energy swirling in her cupped palm. Frostbite thrust her hand toward Ingrid’s feet and a stream of ice shot out from her skin, forming a small glacier around Ingrid’s legs. Ingrid cried out in surprise and barely caught herself, her momentum carrying her upper half forward while the ice held her feet cemented to the tracks. The bomb she’d been crafting evaporated as her focus transitioned from fury to bewilderment.
“You seem to be the last Anarchist standing,” said Frostbite, nonchalantly popping off a few ice crystals that had formed on her knuckles and letting them fall to the ground. “For now, that is. Humor me—is there any reason why we shouldn’t kill you all after what happened at the parade today?”
Ingrid snarled. Blue energy began to hum around her hands again. “I wasn’t at your stupid parade,” she said, and even though Nova knew it was a lie, she found it to be a shockingly convincing one.
“I don’t care,” said Frostbite. “Winston Pratt led an attack against the innocent people of Gatlon City, and it’s my job to make sure that’s the last time our civilians will ever be terrorized by an Anarchist.”
“Winston Pratt attacked your parade, and to my knowledge, you now have him in custody,” said Ingrid. “So what do you want with us?”
Frostbite snorted. “You expect me to believe that imbecile was working alone?”
“That’s exactly what I expect you to believe,” Ingrid said. She seemed to relax, her snarl turning to a cool glare. “And you and I both know you don’t have any evidence to suggest otherwise, because if you did, we wouldn’t be having this chat while you wait for me to say something that will incriminate myself or the others.” She started to toss the glowing bomb into the air, catching it easily every time it came back down. “I’ve seen your Council’s edicts. No one shall be found guilty by mere association, right? So don’t threaten us, sweetheart. And good luck finding something that will connect us to the Puppeteer’s crimes. He was on his own today. We had nothing to do with it.”
Frostbite moved forward until the toes of her boots hung over the edge of the platform. “I don’t need to connect you to the attack on the parade,” she said, waggling her fingers. A new stream of ice shot toward Ingrid. The block of ice around her legs grew larger, expanding over her thighs and hips. “To attack a Renegade is an offense of the highest order. With your temper, it won’t be that hard to get you to lash out. Sort of like poking a rabid dog, now that I think about it.”
Ingrid hissed as the column of ice made its way over her abdomen. She had stopped tossing the bomb and was gripping it in one fist.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Frostbite. “You’ll insist it was self-defense. Except … without anyone being here to witness it, who’s going to believe your word over mine? An Anarchist versus a celebrated Renegade.” She clicked her tongue in feigned pity. “It seems you have a decision to make. Attack me, and we’ll arrest you. Or confess your involvement at the parade today, and we’ll still arrest you, but we’ll be a bit nicer about it.” She shrugged. “Or do nothing. What do you think will kill you first? The cold or suffocation? I’d bet on the latter, myself.”
The ice made its way over Ingrid’s chest and began to climb over her shoulders. Soon she would have no use of her arms, or her bombs, at all.
Nova squeezed her eyes shut, trying to think clearly despite the way her veins were pulsing, hot and steady.
These were the superheroes the world idolized? Maybe Ingrid wasn’t wholly innocent. Maybe none of them were, but then, the Renegades weren’t, either. Here they were, torturing Ingrid, trying to force a false confession. They had ruined Honey’s hives, caused destruction in their tunnels, torn through the supplies they needed for survival, all in an effort to find a legitimate excuse to have them imprisoned.
Her finger slipped over the trigger. She opened her eyes and her vision seemed suddenly clear. Her mind free of obstructions.
She found Frostbite through the scope.
Maybe the darts weren’t poisoned, but that didn’t mean a well-targeted shot couldn’t do plenty of damage.
She focused on Frostbite’s eye, which was pale blue. Lighter than Captain Chromium’s, but not by much.
The trigger pressed into her finger.
She had just begun to squeeze when a cascade of fire, bright and blazing, roared across the tracks.